First Day of Student Teaching

01.14.2013 | Education

Today was my first day of student teaching, and I quite liked it! I am placed at Stebbins High school, which is part of Mad River Local School district. I was at the same school with the same students and the same teacher last semester, so it was a pretty easy transition into this semester. Last semester I spent six weeks just getting acquainted and comfortable with the school, and I did a bit of teaching, but now I am going to be the full teacher within a few weeks. Yikes!

For the first few days I am going to be observing and getting reoriented to the classes. Last semester I was only there in the mornings, so I just met the afternoon classes today. My schedule for the day starts with homeroom at 7:40, then first period is our planning period, second and third periods are sophomore biology classes, and the remaining four periods are freshman physical science classes. It is rough getting up super early, but boy is it nice getting done at 2:40! I am so used to college classes where you are almost never done that early! I thought I would miss having classes and whatnot, but I realized that I have no tests until my last Praxis exam in April! It is also weird to come home and have only work that I enjoy to do. Tonight I had to study up on radioactive decay/ half-life stuff for the physical science classes, and I am starting my plans for next week in biology. As much as I love biology, it is never exciting to study for an exam, so it is a nice change to just work on lesson plans, make worksheets, and refresh on material I already know. After these first few weeks things will certainly pick up as I start teaching more and more, which means more grading and more planning, but I love it!

Now that you have an ideal image of my day, I will fill in the gaps with the realities of my first day student teaching. I went to bed last night later than I wanted to because I procrastinated on unpacking and preparing for today. Once I finally was in bed, I could not sleep for anything because I was freezing! My bedroom is so cold that I slept with my heated blanket on high, pulled up over my face to keep my face from freezing off! Once I finally shivered myself to sleep, I woke up with a sore throat. I took a shower, realized that I was running late, put on mismatched socks, changed my socks, grabbed my million bags, and headed out the door. By the way, now that I am almost a teacher, I have dramatically increased the number of bags I own--I think it comes with the territory. Anyways, I was all discombobulated in the car trying to eat my morning peanut butter sandwich, drink my coffee, and be sure not to get lost on my way. Well I thought I had myself all situated when all of the sudden one of my windshield wiper blades flew off my car! I was on a city street, so I pulled off to look for it really quick. I get out of my car and start running back down the street looking for my windshield wiper blade in the dark and the freezing cold. I gave up once I realized that I was going to be late over this stupid wiper, so I ran back to my car and continued on my way. I was down to my last few bites of my sandwich, when it inevitably fell on the floor of my car. At this point, I just had to count my blessings and be glad that I only had a few bites of my sandwich left and that it was not raining while I was down a windshield wiper blade. I got to school on time and proceeded to have an uneventful day with plenty of welcomed smiles from the students when they saw that I came back! All in all, I cannot complain.

For the record, on my way home from school, I found my windshield wiper blade and reattached it. I was not going to be defeated by that stupid thing! Anyways, I came home, put on my sweats, made fish and broccoli for dinner, and now here I am.